On asymptotic dimension of groups (Q1594583)

The authors extend Gromov's notion of asymptotic dimension to answer questions relating to the finite asymptotic dimensionality of amalgamated products and HNN extensions. A theorem involving countable unions of metric spaces for asymptotic dimension is proved and the results are applied to groups acting on asymptotically finite dimensional metric spaces. After proving results on the asymptotic dimension of finitely generated groups acting by isometries on metric spaces, the authors investigate sequences of groups with norms, \(\{A_i,\|\;\|_i\}\), to determine bounds on the asymptotic dimension of the free product \(*A_i\). These results are extended to include amalgamated products, \(A*_CB\), to show that \(\text{asdim}(A*_CB)<\infty\) for finite dimensional groups \(A\) and \(B\) with common subgroup \(C\). By investigating group presentations of groups acting on graphs and trees, the authors prove that for any group \(G\) with \(\text{asdim}(G)<\infty\), an HNN extension \(G'\) of \(G\) has \(\text{asdim}(G')<\infty\). Finally, it is shown that for the case of the Davis extension, \(\Gamma\), of a group \(\pi\), if \(\text{asdim}(\pi)<\infty\), then \(\text{asdim}(\Gamma)<\infty\).